Northgate Parking: The Rest of the Story

Radio icon Paul Harvey was known for his catch phrase, “and now you know the rest of the story.” If you rely entirely on some reports about the city’s operation of the parking assets in Northgate, you may only know part of that story. Let’s set the record straight.

The College Station City Council voted 7-0 at last Thursday’s workshop meeting to direct staff to provide a feasibility report on liquidating the assets and a Request for Proposal (RFP) to outsource all parking operations, and we will work diligently to fulfill those requests.

It’s worth noting that, as director of the Economic and Community Development Department, I’ve seen our team successfully administer and manage these assets on behalf of the citizens of College Station over the past 18 months.

When the city manager assigned us this challenge in April 2009, we inherited a parking fund and associated assets that were subsidized by more than $300,000 annually from the general fund. By August 2010, we had completely restructured the fund in a manner that not only completely covered its costs, but also realized a 15 percent increase in revenues and was finally building an honest capital reserve.

In just more than a year, our ECD team transformed the public assets in Northgate into a much more valuable, efficient, cost-effective and customer-friendly experience. In addition, we continue to implement desperately needed physical upgrades. None of this would have been possible without the hard work of our dedicated staff, and I’m extremely proud of them for achieving this tremendous success story.